See that awful, ugly ladder in the sleeve above? That's what happened when I tried to knit sleeves on 3.75mm double pointed needles with a lace-weight yarn. No matter how hard I tried to keep my carrying yarn tight after the first and second stitches on each needle, that ladder would just not go away. Why then, did I knit the whole thing down to the ribbing? Was I thinking it would just magically disappear? or that I could readjust the tension row-by-row once I was done? Who knows. Sometimes one just has to do these things to get a good look at them and to figure out how to solve the problem. So, how to solve the problem... Magic loop? Nope. Knit sleeve in stockinette and sew up seams later? Nuh-uh. Replace one lost double pointed needle with 16" circular so I could work with five needles? No again. My saving grace was Hiya Hiya's 9" circular needle. Thank you Three Bags Full for carrying these! I raced over last weekend with kids in tow to pick one up and finished one sleeve last night and what a difference it made:
Nice, smooth, ladder-less sleeve. It felt a little awkward to knit with them at first but I kept my hands relaxed which resulted in a good match in tension. Should have this thing finally finished by the end of our long weekend (my Ravelry start date shows May 2010)!
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